I knew it would end in tears...

Today is going to be the transit of Venus, but yesterdays' once in a lifetime landmark was the first judging post of the Dark Blue SEO Challenge - making a competition out of rigging the Google algo. The contestants are bidding to rank number one for a specific search term on both June 7th and July 7th.

It is all rather unseemly - of course any SEO worth their salt could win it, but wouldn't want to dirty their hands with it. Now bloggers are trying to hi-jack the contest to turn it into a simple Google Bombing campaign. Which as any other SEO worth their salt knows is not the way to stay at the top of the rankings for commercial terms.

However, what did make me laugh was that if you do the search for the target phrase - Nigritude Ultramarine - currently you get served this in right-hand ad slot....

....and it is that kind of creative thinking that earns you search engine dollars...